This proposal is a combined request originating from the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, Harvard University. These schools, on adjacent locations, are seeking to address the tremendous demand for molecular characterization by establishing a centralized mass spectrometry facility. This University consortium plans to reestablish the existing analytical capability into a newly renovated larger laboratory (currently underway), add a new mass spectrometer (MS) and to support this facility with the additional personnel and supplies necessary for effective operation. This application seeks partial support of a high-field magnet (HFM) MS. A MS facility in this area of intense biological research will compliment investigative programs in two ways. First, by opening up totally new avenues of research for the chracterization of very polar and, in addition, intractable sulfated biopolymers and, second, by providing more instrumental time to support those programs requiring more conventional MS support. The primary investigators identified in this proposal have a great need for extended analytical capability consistent with the recent developments in fast atom bombardment (FAB) and HFM-MS. Peptide and nucleic acid sequence studies have been reported by this technique and we have been active in some of this work at the lower masses. We now have evidence that negative ion FAB-MS will provide definitive sequence and molecular weight information for sulfated carbohydrate oligomers, structures analogous to heparin and the glycosaminoglycans biopolymers which are impossible to sequence by conventional techniques. The proposed acquisition of a new FAB-HEM-MS will be maintained in total by funds from this University and will provide for the first time in the Boston area the new technique of FAB-ionization with the capability of very high mass analysis. It is because of the appropriateness and great need for this advanced instrumentation and interdisciplinary contacts of the faculty involved in this proposal that the University supports its share of this application.